That's What Friends Are For
presented by Cincinnati Center For Developmental Disorders

Individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities often have not had the same opportunities to develop and maintain lasting personal relationships such as friendships. Too often they find themselves isolated from the general community - segregated services, away from the mainstream of life. That's What Friends Are For is an 18-minute videotape that explores a set of friendships developed between older persons with mental retardation and developmental disabilities (MR/DD) and older persons without MR/DD over a period of three years, as a means to facilitate their participation in the community. The video shows the friends engaged in various activities with mutual benefits. The people are interviewed in the settings where they go: fishing, senior center art class, bowling, backstage with an amateur dramatic group. The individuals explain what they do and the mutual satisfaction they derive from their friendship. These vignettes are very powerful when shown in cross discipline workshops that is, to agency staff from the aging system and the MR/DD system to enlist their support for programs such as this.

Dr. Ruth Robbins describes the two-way effects of the developing friendships on both participants. The non-handicapped senior learns that the older person with developmental disabilities is a person with feelings like his/her own, and the person with mental retardation has a friend who introduces him/her to the community, and shares their family and leisure activities.

Evenlyn Sutton, gerontologist and Assistant Director of the Access Project, talks about similarities between the older adult with a developmental disability and those who are non-handicapped. Both have needs for social activities and companionship.

Volunteer companions also speak about the satisfaction that they derived from their association and activities with their friends.

Made in 1988, this video is still relevant.

Available from:

The Clearinghouse on Aging and Developmental Disabilities Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago 1640 West Roosevelt Road Chicago, Illinois 60608-6904 Telephone: (312) 413-1860 Fax: (312) 996-6942 E-mail: rrtcamr@uic.edu Web site: www.uic.edu/orgs/rrtcamr/index.html

Description of Resource: 18-minute video

Approximate Cost: $15.00 (US)